Woman Drying Her Arm
Edgar Degas·1890
Historical Context
Degas's bather series, begun in earnest in the early 1880s and continuing through the 1890s, was his most sustained and personally committed body of work — the subject he chose when his eyesight began deteriorating and he needed motifs he could develop through close, repeated observation. Woman Drying Her Arm belongs to this sequence of women in private moments of bodily care, observed as if without their knowledge, in the tradition of the voyeuristic pastoral nude translated into the modern domestic bathroom. Degas executed these in pastel, oil, and monotype, using each medium to explore different aspects of the same formal problem.
Technical Analysis
Degas applies pastel or oil with the hatched, layered technique he refined through decades of drawing practice, building the figure's volume through overlapping coloured strokes that avoid smooth blending. The viewpoint is oblique and close, cropping the figure to emphasise the action rather than the body as a whole.
